Fiend at Court Unplugged
I recently submitted an email with lengthy feedback and observations specific to National Level Senior Women’s Tennis to the USTA Adult Competition Committee. (ACC) The talking points contained in that message echo themes that have appeared on this site over the past two years. When playing the Westwood Senior Championships a couple of weeks ago, I was struck at how pervasive the concerns over the impacts of recent tournament changes and implementations are within the Senior Women’s Tennis community.
“Fiend at Court Unplugged” is the content theme published by this site every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Unplugged series explores topics that do not fit cleanly into the rotating categories assigned to the other days of the week. Today the Unplugged series launches into the points raised in my recent feedback to the USTA ACC. Excerpts of my message will be shared along with expanded rationale and background information about each item.
The USTA ACC is chartered to “To assist and support the USTA national staff, the USTA network, and the tennis industry in promoting and providing recreational and competitive tournament play opportunities for players age 18 and over and for parent/ child events.” That is a lot of scope beyond Senior Women’s Tennis. That understanding was reflected in the following paragraph.
I appreciate that the charter of the ACC is fairly broad and that the women who constitute the National women’s playing community represent a small part of the communities under your purview. That being said, promoting and preserving the pinnacle of competitive tennis for all playing demographics is a critical part of the tennis ecosystem. It would be detrimental to tennis tournaments overall if the National level of competition ceased to be viable. In fact, I am concerned that we are already dangerously close to that precipice.
Opening paragraph of my feedback letter to the USTA ACC.
It is the nature of the tennis ecosystem that there always needs to be a higher tier of competition that inspires players to be the best they can possibly be. If the open level of competition doesn’t exist, the very best players in the sport simply don’t have a place to compete. That leads to attrition. The elimination of any tier of competition immediately puts the adjacent tiers at risk.
In other words, if the Senior Women’s Open tennis ceased to exist, those players will be forced out of the ecosystem. That immediately puts other players at risk of suffering the same fate. When one level of play collapses, the adjacent tiers may follow. I am quite serious in that concern.
That leads to the first major point raised in my email.
Senior Women’s Tennis is Competitive.
I probably would not have thought to include this point, but two independent sources who played the La Jolla hard courts relayed to me that they were told that Senior Women’s Tennis is “recreational” and “social.” While there are certainly aspects of that in the women’s tennis community, the primary word to describe play at the National level is competitive. Women in this community are training and competing hard not just for National Championships but also places on Senior International teams representing the United States and the USTA. These things are very important within that player community.The structure of the tournaments at the National Level must be built on a foundational understanding that this is the highest level of competition available for Senior Women in tennis and that preserving that is important to the overall tennis ecosystem.
Point 1 from my feedback letter to the USTA ACC.
Of all the conversations I had with other Senior Women’s Players at Westwood, probably the most disappointing was the fact that the players were told by the director of the National Hardcourt tournament at La Jolla that Senior Women’s tennis is primarily “social” and “recreational.” Additionally, a prominent national and international player was directly told that that the USTA was a “business,” insinuating that Senior Women’s Tennis was not important due to the fact that it is a relatively small part of the overall tennis playing community.
The fact of the matter is that the USTA is a nonprofit organization. The “How the USTA Works For You” mission statement published on the USTA’s own website emphasizes that point. “The USTA is a progressive and diverse not-for-profit organization whose volunteers, professional staff and financial resources support a single mission: to promote and develop the growth of tennis.”
It is inconsistent for the USTA (or individuals representing the organization) to decide that any playing community is irrelevant based on the number of participants. That marginalization is what leads to lower player opportunity and engagement. That, in turn, leads to lower participation.
I wonder what Billie Jean King would have thought if she was a fly on the wall in La Jolla as the Senior Women were told that their matches were simply not as competitive as the Senior Men’s events. There shouldn’t be a place for that attitude within the USTA. We still have a long way to go, baby.
- USTA Committees, USTA National Document Archive, viewed 10 June 2021.
- USTA Adult Competition Committee/Regulation Subcommittee Annual Adult & Family Regulation Change Proposal TIMELINE, USTA National Document Archive, viewed 10 June 2021.
- How the USTA Works For You, USTA National Landing Page, viewed 10 June 2021.
